


shift

by v3ilfire



Series: between fields of fire and miles to go [5]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: F/M, such fluffy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-25
Updated: 2015-08-25
Packaged: 2018-04-17 03:18:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4650237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/v3ilfire/pseuds/v3ilfire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The woman - the girl who wanted revenge on Arl Howe was Lady Camilla Cousland. Lady Cousland wore her hair in a braid and hid the roughness of her palms from her mother, she ate at banquets and charmed her fellow members of high society with her knowledge of Fereldan history and Orlesian tea sets. Lady Cousland’s mother was in an outrage when the infamous stablehand incident forced her to crop her beautiful hair.</p><p>Lady Cousland did not kill Arl Howe, but Warden Cousland destroyed him. Lady Cousland was dead, and she deserved a proper burial."</p>
            </blockquote>





	shift

It was supposed to feel good.

It was supposed to feel right. It was supposed to be revenge. Catharsis. Retribution. She was supposed to have found Arl Howe, humiliated him, stuck an arrow into him for each fallen member of her house - a quill’s worth for each member of her family - and left him to die. That is how it was supposed to go, how every story of every wronged hero she’d ever heard of ended.

And, for once, everything went according to plan. She had shot the Arl plenty. She had thrown her punches, broken his bones, felt the air leave his lungs and watched the light leave his eyes. She reduced Howe to a pulp with her own callused hands, and she sat atop his mangled body with her hands still pressing into his neck and she waited, and there was nothing. No divine choir, no wave of relief, no joy, or closure, or absolution, no relief, no catharsis, no release, no retribution.

All that, and nothing. All that, and she was thrown into a prison cell with Alistair on Anora’s whim. Without a second thought, Camilla could call the entire debacle the second worst day of her entire life. She expected going to meet the Calling to round up the top three.

She was too entrenched in her sour mood to hear the first set of knocks, but the second got her attention She sighed, and for a moment considered turning whoever it was away. Her head was throbbing, and she was determined to polish her bow into submission, considering the lack of things she could smash into smithereens available in her immediate vicinity.

“My dear lady, are you inside?”  
Camilla sighed. She would have turned Zevran out if the word ‘lady’ wasn’t dripping with sarcasm.  
“Come in,” she said.

Zevran sauntered in, the laces on his shirt undone in some caricature of seduction, and leaned on the doorframe. Where he dug up such an outfit was beyond her, though she couldn’t say she was even a little surprised. Were she in a better mood, she’d suggest a rose between his teeth.  
“I heard you are in need of some relaxation. I brought you a bedtime story,” he said, and pulled a book from behind him, one Camilla recognized as a particularly raunchy anthology of Antivan poetry.

Zevran’s face fell when his Warden’s eyes slid back to her bow. Normally the getup alone would conjure a roll of the eyes or a giggle - to have the outfit and the book fail simultaneously was unheard of. Camilla’s grumpy moods were easy to dissuade with a game or a back rub, but this? This was not a bad mood. This was …

“You know, it’s very strange to see you this quiet. You have… nothing to complain about? Rescuing the Queen? Being betrayed by the Queen? Not even Fort Drakon?”  
Camilla leaned the bow on her bedside table and ditched the rag.  
“I’m just tired.”

She shifted over to make room for the elf, since he seemed determined to hover around her until he could chase away the cloud over her head. For lack of anything to talk about, Camilla ran a hand through the stray strands of her hair - it was growing too long for her tastes, some of it reaching past her earlobes - and sighed.  
“How is your head?” he asked, dropping the sultry tone as he ran his fingertips along her bandages. Camilla made a noncommittal noise in response, and proceeded to flop over on her bed, her eyes unfocused in the direction of the door. Being hit by some soldier who didn’t know how to bloody aim wasn’t exactly new for her.

“What happened at Fort Drakon?” he asked, after a while.  
“The usual,” she answered. The lack of a detailed and enthusiastic account of her grand escape was worrisome, to say the least. Even more so was Alistair’s description of her glassy eyes and her silence during their escape (“She didn’t even complain. She just… kept moving. Quietly.”).

“It…was not the prison, was it?”

Camilla stayed silent. Of course the assassin was being perceptive - how timely. Even if he was right.

Zevran was about to follow up with another question when he felt the warden twitch next to him, her entire body wilting in on itself. She was already crying when he turned to look, her face buried in her pillow to muffle herself. The first time in months she had a bed to herself, and she used it as a handkerchief. How fitting.

She felt Zevran’s hand settle on her shoulder, expecting him to give her a backrub or make some lewd joke, but he did nothing of the sort. He merely sat there and waited until she was all cried out, waited until her body was limp and her breathing no longer raggedy. She remembered her maids telling her that crying makes it better, to just let it out.

First time in nearly a year that she allowed herself to cry, and for what? She felt even worse.

“My dear Warden,” he started, softer than Camilla knew he could be, “what is it that has you so beyond merely wanting to hit your obstacles into submission?”

Warden. Warden.

That was the problem. _She_ was the problem.

The woman - the girl who wanted revenge on Arl Howe was Lady Camilla Cousland. Lady Cousland wore her hair in a braid and hid the roughness of her palms from her mother, she ate at banquets and charmed her fellow members of high society with her knowledge of Fereldan history and Orlesian tea sets. Lady Cousland’s mother was in an outrage when the infamous stablehand incident forced her to crop her beautiful hair.

Lady Cousland did not kill Arl Howe, but Warden Cousland destroyed him. Lady Cousland was dead, and she deserved a proper burial.

Camilla peeled herself from the pillow and rose from the bed, Zevran’s hand slipping off her shoulder and returning to its place on his leg. He watched Camilla’s tiny frame move to her mirror - floor-length, thank the Maker, or else she’d be doomed to seeing herself only from the neck up. To his surprise, she began unwrapping the bandages from her head, letting the bloodied wraps fall to the floor.

“What are you doing?”  
“Killing myself.”  
Without warning, Camilla plucked a dagger from her belt. Zevran yelled something in Antivan and jumped forward to stop her, but all she did was shear a lock of hair from the side of her head.

There was a moment of silence between them, but when the fear wore off his face, when his heart stopped pounding, he understood.

“Ah… I see. Let me help you, mi amor.”

She hated to admit it, but having her hair cut by a man far more practiced with a knife than her was almost relaxing. Zevran had faced her away from the mirror and tied the top section of her hair back with a ribbon - the fact that it was even long enough to form a small tuft on the back of her head was a shock to her. The rest of her hair was being slowly sheared away, raining to her feet.  
“Is there a reason you chose to do this tonight? Looking to make a statement at the Landsmeet?”  
“Will you drop it if I say no?”  
“I will not pry.”

Camilla let that sit for a bit, but she was surprised to find that she wasn’t quite content with keeping her reasons from him - even if she wasn’t quite sure what her reasons were. She felt them festering - though less so with each lock of hair that fell to her feet - and she hated keeping secrets. Especially from him.

Perhaps it was good she couldn’t see his face in the mirror.

“I just needed to change.”

The words fell in front of her, barely louder than a whisper. Though Zevran seemed satisfied with them, they left a funny taste in the Warden’s mouth.  
“I mean -” she started to correct herself, and then stopped. Started again, stopped, started, fumbled until finally Zevran chuckled and broke the weird tumble she seemed to have trapped herself in, incapable of putting the words, I’m killing Lady Cousland, Lady Cousland is dead in the right order.

“You do not have to explain further, if you do not want to.”  
“I - it’s… I needed to see … the change. Any change. I’m not … I’m not Lady Cousland anymore. Lady Cousland is dead, just like her family. And Warden Cousland can’t afford to be chasing ghosts anymore.”

She didn’t realize she was crying again until the tears fell onto her clutched fists.

“And… finished. Take a look.”

Camilla took a shaky breath, and stood, wiping her tears on the back of her hand. She turned towards the mirror and stood in awe. Her little coiff was mostly gone, save for the section he tied atop her head, and the bruise from the soldier’s pommel spilled black and blue from underneath her hairline. She was puffy-eyed and blotchy, but this was new. This was good. This was Warden Cousland.

She ran her hands along the sides of her head, mindful of the bruise, not quite believing what a difference a few inches of hair made.  
“Well?”  
“It’s brilliant,” she whispered.  
“Now all you need is a tattoo, and then no one will recognize you. You could run away to Antiva and no one would be the wiser.”

Zevran had chuckled through his suggestion, just joking, but Camilla turned towards him with her eyes wide and almost panicked.  
“Would you?”  
“Would I what? Ravish you? Feed you the finest strawberries this house has to offer? Slaughter bandits in your wa--?”  
“Tattoo me,” she cut in. “Today. Right now.”  
“Camilla, you… do know that tattoos are permanent, correct?”  
“Yes, yes, I’m not stupid, I know, I just-- it feels right, and if anyone’s gonna do it, I want it to be you.”

Zevran stood in a stunned silence. Camilla was impulsive by all means, but there was something in her eyes, something desperate.  
“... Let me go get my inks.”

Camilla had not been warned about how painful the experience would be, but she did not whine. She let the needle poke at her skin over, and over, and over, and over, until finally a design began to form over her collarbone. And then it stopped.

“That is a good start,” the elf said, admiring his own work. “We will continue after the Landsmeet.”  
“You mean you’re not done?”  
Zevran laughed, taking her impatience as a sign of recovery.  
“Of course not, mi amor. These things take time.”  
Camilla rolled her eyes as she popped onto her feet and ran to the mirror, cocking her head over her shoulder to examine the red-rimmed lines spilling onto her back. Zevran saw her lips quirk up for a moment.  
“It’s perfect,” she whispered. It was meant to be rhetorical, he was sure, but Zevran pocketed the compliment anyway. “We’ll finish after the Landsmeet, then.”

She reached for her shirt and pulled it over her head again, covering her bandaged chest and shoulder.  
"Alright," she said, eyeing her new tattoo one last time, "I need to sleep. Tomorrow's going to be a pain in my ass if I've ever known one." She glanced at Zevran, but whatever thanks she had ready on her tongue got caught behind her teeth as soon as she caught sight of the way he smiled at her. Just sitting on the edge of her bed, eyes crinkled with - what was it? Pride? Affection? She couldn't place it, not when her stomach was doing flips.

"... You look fucking ridiculous, by the way. Put a shirt on."

And he laughed as he stood, clapping his hands together in joy.  
"And there she is! You have finally returned to us. Perhaps next time we'll continue your transformations, no? Pierce your ears, perhaps?"  
"Already pierced, asshole."  
"Are they, now? That is... good to know."  
Camilla raised a brow at the sudden change in his tone. He was hiding something.

(It was in his pocket, but she wouldn't know that for a few days yet.)

Before she could ask, Zevran rose and moved towards the door.  
"For what it is worth, mi amor, you were always just yourself to me."

He left her stunned, standing in a pile of her own hair- the ashes of Lady Cousland herself, the poor thing. And she was still, and she was soft, and she was -- scared? Excited? With him, it was always hard to untangle her own feelings among the butterflies.

Regardless, Camilla huffed and kicked lamely at one of the ginger piles on the floor.  
"Fucking dick." 


End file.
